Once the euphoria has settled we may all realize the result of the U.S. presidential election has been a two-edged sword not only for America but for the rest of the world. On one side nothing has changed: The polls confirmed the status quo and with it the inertia that handicapped President Barack Obama's first term in office. On the other side we escaped the Darwinian ˜Survival of the Fittest' policy of a Mitt Romney, his threatened budget cuts with the specter of another recession, a rearmament drive and a probable war with Iran. A gun-ho Netanyahu was weakened and the racist, anti-female, anti-black, anti-Latino and homophobic Tea Party was defeated. Forget the oratorical skills of a re-elected president who in his victory speech promised â€œthe best is yet to come and called for 'unity and cooperation' with a Republican Party whose basic principles are enshrined in private enterprise, the privileges of the privileged and Business Ueber Alles.Triumphant at the polls with an unexpected large majority Obama's hands continue to be tied by a Congress in which the Republicans have a comfortable majority and are sure to block or dilute any measure they deem harmful to America's rich and its rural population, the pillars of Republican power. In reality the lopsided result is bad news for those who hoped the election would give either candidate the legislative leverage to pull the U.S. economy out of its long slump so that America could once again lead a global recovery. Bringing the U.S. back into manufacturing mode is considered a vital antidote against the relentless global domination of the Chinese economy. The western business community was not interested whether Obama reduced America's massive debt, industrial stagnancy and unemployment by taxing the rich or whether Mitt Romney would inject more (probably printed) money into the U.S. economy. Their interest was in the application of a remedy that would halt the global slide into recession.It is sad the U.S. electorate overwhelmingly picked Obama for president but did not give him the power to carry out his pledges. The reason: America remains almost equally divided into two nations, one Republican, one Democrat, one 21st century the other stuck in a time war, one innovative the other reactionary. A brilliant orator with liberal ideas and dreams of a better society, Obama appealed far more to a new generation of voters then his business-minded and affluent Mormon opponent and the anachronistic ideas of the Republican right wing. Young voters and particularly single women, scared by Republican anti-feminism and talks of war, gave Obama the edge. The president was free to espouse his ideals for a more just society while Romney decided to shackle his presidential aspirations to his party's religious fundamentalist wing, a powerful lobby which among other issues clamors for an anachronistic ban on abortions, birth control and gay marriages. He also kowtowed to the Tea Party, a mafia of political fundamentalists among them the hare-brained Sarah Palin. The Tea Party miserably failed to deliver the reactionary vote. Perhaps it overestimated a right wing political force that makes more noise and receives more attention then it obviously merits. A new generation of voters in 2012 proved far more progressive then they were given credit by the obsolete doctrines of the Republican Party's conservative wing. In fact the most impressive result of the election was this: America is obviously changing, more and more of its citizen no longer willing to accept the escalating discrepancy between rich and poor. A new generation of empowered women and non-white minorities voted for a second term for an African-American president against all historical evidence that presidents are never re-elected at a time when the US economy is in decline. Obama's thumping victory has also been a slap in the face of the U.S. mass media which (led by its opinion maker the New York Times) has been headlining a 'razor-edge election'. After the first returns came in CNN even predicted a victory for Romney. No doubt political loyalty of the mass media is guided by the corporate interests of its billionaire tycoons who almost always favor the Republican Party. Still this time around Obama cannot disappoint the expectations he aroused when he promised so much four years ago and managed to deliver so little. He will have to bridge the gap, often an abyss, between the two political parties or make liberal use of his presidential veto to force changes. One way or the other he must become aggressive rather then compromising if he wants to deliver. With his domestic policy still a large question mark he does have more power to decide Washington 's foreign policy, among the issues the embarrassing one-sided U.S. support for Israel in the Middle East. Then there is the danger of a withdrawal from Afghanistan, virtually handing the country back to the Taliban. And what game will he play in Syria where a civil war threatens to spill over to other Middle East countries, among them the always volatile Lebanon. As a champion of humanitarian and moral issues (at least in speech) Obama will also have to decide whether the United States continues its policy of killing its enemies (usually identified as terrorists) by remote-controlled drone missile strikes. The Israelis who invented the drone strike system against Palestinian terrorists have labeled such attacks targeted killings though no doubt these strikes are state-authorized assassinations with inevitable collateral damage to innocent bystanders. There is an obvious moral flaw in someone deciding that a person or persons thousands of miles away in another sovereign nation must be exterminated with a remote controlled killing method because their deaths is perceivedas in the interests of the United States and their life is perceived as a threat to U.S. national security. There is neither a trial nor a jury to hear evidence in these cases. Someone decides. Someone pushes a button. In the end President Obamaâ€™s legacy may not be success at home but in channeling America's considerable military might toward more pacific tasks. Instead of bombing nations into rubble and killing enemies with unmanned killer planes (the kind of video game where the far away dealer of death has been taped shouting: (Light them up!) Obama could change the growing global conception of the American bully.Ends

Uli Schmetzer is a former foreign correspondent for Reuters and the Chicago Tribune. He is the author of four books, available on Amazon and Kindle.